Modern Art

The restoration is done,
not to perfection, but well enough
that you are no longer a museum piece,
an unholy relic on the artist’s bench,
pieced back together like a puzzle.

It has taken years,
most of it in plain view,
largely ignored by the passersby
who saw the half completed icon
as no more than a bit of history,
something on display, a reminder
of how broken we can become,
of paths not to follow.

The work has been painstaking. Tedious.
Done in fits and spurts and long seasons
of silence, Often
in the dark, by braille.

Somehow, the pieces never quite fit together again.
Some have gone missing, lost in the floodwaters.
Others have grown appendages and thorns,
defenses against a reoccurrence.

What is left is not a recreation then,
for recreation is an impossible thing, an illusion.
No,
what is left is a new thing,
a thing without a finishing at all,
always changing,
new things cling to it like cellophane.
transparent texture.
modern art.
unrecognizable and yet
stirring something deep in the heart.

About this poem. 

Not the poem I expected to write this morning. Not about art, but a life of rebuilding, of recreating, and what lies ahead.

Perhaps too personal to make sense, but there you go.

Tom